I have been thinking about this for some years now, but for certain reasons rhyming with prudence have been putting it off. It has been my practice to publicly register my itemized thanksgiving to God on Thanksgiving Day, and I certainly have had no shortage of material. God is greatly to be praised — “Blessed …
A Way of Escape from Self-Deception
The hardest sin to confess is the sin of self-deception. A few moment’s reflection should show why. The very nature of the sin means that you don’t know what is going on. So how can you repent of a sin you don’t understand? But the fact that it is a sin, needing to be repented, …
And Eats Hate
God does not just feed us when times are easy. He feeds us when we are at home and at peace, He feeds us on the road, and He feeds us when we are at war. He sets a Table for us, David says, in the presence of our enemies. There are two ways this …
Church Music and the Other Kind
I take it as a given that God can be worshiped and genuinely glorified, in a Lord’s Day service, with different styles of music, and with different kinds of instrumentation. I do not say any style of music, but I do say different styles of music. Some music is of course excluded because it is …
It Can’t Be Both
This is our first Lord’s Day worship service after the re-election of Barack Obama to the presidency. We will be considering the spiritual ramifications of this in some detail in the sermon next Lord’s Day, but a few things must be said now. Next Lord’s Day we will be examining how nations are brought to …
He Gives Us Food
In partaking of this meal, we are recognizing that the Lord Jesus is our ruler and sovereign. We rejoice in His righteousness, and we exult in His care for us. That care is manifested in a glorious way, here, at this Table. “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, …
Conviction and No Condemnation Together
Our constant temptation as conservative Christians is to take our definition of sin from Scripture, which is appropriate, but then to calibrate our conviction levels for those sins on the basis of our own experience. We know that not all sin is equally serious, and so the levels of a particular sin that we experience …
Accepting What He Gives
In just a few moments we are going to be eating and drinking the good news of our salvation. Before we do that, let us hear the good news of our salvation. Our salvation, the whole thing, is God’s gift to us. He is our righteousness, our justification, and our sanctification. He gives Himself to …
Coming Near to Hear
When we gather at the Lord’s Table, we are coming near to Him. We are approaching Him. How could we be partaking of Him and not be coming near? From the vantage of the holy things, our worship is a coming. From the vantage of our daily lives, our worship is a going. Come, let …
The Holy, Horror, and Halloween
I want to take the approach of yet another Halloween to address something that is increasingly related to it. A few years ago I wrote about the lawfulness of celebrating Halloween itself — at the little kid dressing up level — but here I want to develop further a thought I mentioned in passing there. …